#also fall of Soviet union

[fuckingstupidbracket]

"I don't know if it counts as history since it was within the last 100 years" MY BROTHER IN CHRIST

WORLD WAR 2 IS WITHIN THE LAST 100 YEARS

[shinningraes]

Every time I listen to ‘All to Well’ (10 Minute Version) by Taylor Swift I always think about Rusame for some reason. The song just gives off their vibes and how the two used to be friends (maybe lovers?) but that ultimately came crashing down once the Russian Empire fell and in came the Soviet Union.

[kaaaaaaaaaearl]

I saw mentions of Scorsese's english wikipedia being locked not sure if from before the meme started or not but I decided to check spanish wikipedia and woe

It is literally so disappointing how underrated this movie is, that I had to do the work myself

Here's the text I added

English translation for the anglos: {That same year, he took advantage of his success in Hollywood to help with the production and funding of Goncharov (1973) by the relatively unknown director Matteo JWHJ 0715 (b. Sciocchezze), whom Scorsese met on a visit to Italy in which he was reunited with distant family. The young director, of charitable spirit with great love and respect for the homeland of his ancestors that had greatly influenced him artistically, decided to help by placing himself as executive producer. Managing with the help of Brian De Palma to get the project going despite protests from investors, who claimed that it would be a failure and getting big names in the industry such as Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. In a 2011 interview Scorsese mentions "Matteo came to me at that dinner...we both connected quickly on account of our love for film and growing cinematographic career (...) He was a brilliant man, he said, 'Martin, I want to make the greatest mafia movie ever made!' we were young and naive...» After Matteo's tragic death mid filming, he took over as director. The change incorporated an Italian-American element by leaning into the brutality of ethnonationalist tribalism and polishing the timeless aesthetic with its outstanding symbolic power. However, it seriously affected the censorship of the homoerotic subplot between the protagonists, which was so recurrent and iconic in Matteo's work. Al Pacino admitted to the Independent in 2019: "Filming was very chaotic (...) a lot of what we shot never made it to the final cut [laughs] I got to kiss John twice that year only for the one without tongue to make it into the big screen!" Unfortunately, the film never got a theatrical release until 1983 and was ignored by critics, but due to the enthusiasm of online communities the film it has had a minor renaissance in 2022.}

It'll probably get changed once the admins notice so the links just lead to stuff related to the meme 79 is the og poster by @beelzeebub | 80 is a biography of Matteo JWHJ 0715 by @galaxygolfergirl | 81 | 82 another post by user @tuulikki | 83 | with 84 I think I fucked up the link but it was supposed to lead to a post about the first time @wilwheaton went to see the movie | and 85 is the Polygon article, I guess you could say the one actual real source

[crancisfrozier]

How is every single news article getting the goncharov characters wrong it’s LITERALLY spelled out in Beelz’s poster. That’s like the only concrete lore this movie actually has.

[afeelgoodblog]

Best News of Last Week - December 11

1. Biden administration to forgive $4.8 billion in student loan debt for 80,300 borrowers

The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it would forgive an additional $4.8 billion in student loan debt, for 80,300 borrowers.

The relief is a result of the U.S. Department of Education’s fixes to its income-driven repayment plans and Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

2. Detroit on pace to have lowest homicide rate in 60 years this year

A partnership to reduce Detroit crime is being praised with the City on pace for the fewest homicides in 60 years.

"This is the day we’ve been waiting for, for a long time," said Mayor Mike Duggan. The coalition which includes city and county leaders that Detroit Police Chief James White formed in late 2021 to return the criminal justice system in Detroit and Wayne County to pre-Covid operations.

3. Dog that killed 8 coyotes to protect sheep running for Farm Dog of the Year

Over a year ago, Casper was stacked up against a pack of 11 coyotes, and he overcame them all to protect the livestock at his Decatur home. Now he needs your help.

Casper, the Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog, needs the public to vote for him to become the American Farm Bureau's "Farm Dog of the Year: People's Choice Pup" contest.

4. Shimmering golden mole thought extinct photographed and filmed over 80 years after last sighting

De Winton's golden mole, last sighted in 1937, has been found alive swimming through sand dunes in South Africa after an extensive search for the elusive species.

5. About 40% of the world's power generation is now renewable

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO) have released their first joint report to strengthen understanding of renewable energy resources and their intricate relationship with climate variability and change.

In 2022 alone, 83% of new capacity was renewable, with solar and wind accounting for most additions. Today, some 40% of power generation globally is renewable, due to rapid deployment in the past decade, according to the report.

6. Jonathan the Tortoise: World’s oldest living land animal celebrates 191st birthday

The world’s oldest living land animal - a Seychelles giant tortoise named Jonathan - has just celebrated his 191st birthday. Jonathan’s estimated 1832 birth year predates the invention of the postal stamp, the telephone, and the photograph.

The iconic creature lived through the US civil war, most of the reign of Queen Victoria, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, and two world wars.

7. New enzyme allows CRISPR technologies to accurately target almost all human genes

A team of engineers at Duke University have developed a method to broaden the reach of CRISPR technologies. While the original CRISPR system could only target 12.5% of the human genome, the new method expands access to nearly every gene to potentially target and treat a broader range of diseases through genome engineering.

---

That's it for this week :)

This newsletter will always be free. If you liked this post you can support me with a small kofi donation here:

Buy me a coffee ❤️

Also don’t forget to reblog this post with your friends.

[tikkunolamresistance]

Mind you the CIA have admitted their involvement in the occupation of Palestine is also due to the patroleum resources in the Middle East that they didn’t want the Soviet Union (socialist opposition to the Capitalist hegemony) getting their hands on.

The Western (primarily United States) involvement here is just another example of Red Scare, the Capitalist regime’s attempt to suppress Socialist development, and to force the Arab world into submission to the Western hegemony. The risk of the most oil rich region of the world— the Middle East— falling into socialist and eventual communist hands is scary to the Capitalist…

Here’s the full CIA document if you’d want a read:

We’re gonna keep a copy of that incase it goes down.

[iberiancadre]

I don't know how possible it is for revolution to happen when America exists. You've seen enough posts by Americans to know they are incapable of having their own revolution, and you know enough history that America will stamp out communism wherever it takes place. I don't like that and I wish it wasn't the case, but that's the reality of the situation.

Okay but for real:

Usamericans do have a real tendency to not have consistently revolutionary ideas, but you gotta remember that we are extremely overexposed to a certain slice of the usamerican population. Not only is the country very overrepresented on the internet, but we also (here) only encounter the set of usamericans who use tumblr. I don't think that usamericans are particularly incapable of revolutionary ideas when compared to other places in the imperial core (they are obviously much worse when compared to non-imperialist countries)

Capitalism within a country will eventually be weakened by whatever thing that occurs, and the same is true for the international system of imperialist capitalism. Yes, the CIA is dedicated to the task of impeding communist revolutions, but they aren't particularly adept at it. In many cases in south america, failed attempts were able to be sabotaged because of a weakness in the revolutionaries, weaknesses which we learn from. For example, Allende's assassination taught us that, even if power is reached through parliamentarism, it is not enough to rid the country of capitalist elements able to sabotage us.

But, my friend, just like we aren't perfect, they aren't either. The CIA was unable to crush the Cuban revolution because the Cubans took enough preemptive measures, because they didn't lower their guard, because the CIA was particularly inept at some attempts, like the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and because of external circumstances like the eventual appearance of soviet nuclear missiles which made intervention much trickier. This did come at the cost of less of Cuba's resources being invested into development.

We will have our defeats, and they will have theirs. Ours will be at greater numbers, but theirs will be colossal and much more difficult to correct. No economic system is eternal, feudalism was the main form of production for a good millennia, and it all went crashing down. Capitalism will do the same, and so will socialism one day give way to a communist society.

Now that we are approaching yet another 1st of May, the international workers' day, I encourage the reader to think how far we've come from the very first one in 1889 and the second international. How much progress workers worldwide have made, both achieving more and more respect in our respective capitalist countries (the first May Day was called as a worldwide demand for the 8 hour workday!) and in creating our own workers' states. Just in China, hundreds of millions of people were lifted from their illiterate and miserable peasant's lives, at the mercy of warlords for hundreds if not thousands of years, through the efficiency of socialism. Thomas Sankara vaccinated millions of children, ended generalized illiteracy, ended genital mutilation and kicked out the french colonizers in just 4 years.

It is very understandable to sometimes fall into defeatism at the face of a seemingly infinite mechanism of oppression. But we have to remember all of those who defeated it locally, and the many more who tried against all odds. I don't know you, friend, but I'm confident when I say that you and me are the descendants of workers, and we are workers ourselves. You and I struggle for a better world free of exploitation of man by man, even for the extremely annoying shitlibs we encounter here. Do not be consumed by the constant arguing and negativity found in social media, the real fight is with our Parties, organizing our own class whether it's through the union, the Party, or any other organization. I don't know about you, but this blog is just an outlet for being a long-winded marxist unable to write a simple sentence, I spend even more time interacting with my comrades and with unpoliticized students. Social media (especially tumblr) will never be a real avenue for change beyond what spreading awareness and occasional education can do.

[frogchiro]

I hear it is time to spread the word of our lord and savior Tachanka? 👀

link: (https://rainbowsix.fandom.com/wiki/Tachanka_(Siege) Context of link: Just the wiki page of R6 operator Tachanka.

But I wanna highlight a few things!!!

Alexsandr Senaviev was born on November 3rd in Leningrad, Russia to a military family. At the age of eighteen, Senaviev was conscripted into military service just as the Soviet Union was ending its operations in Afghanistan. Upon the dissolution of his draft, Senaviev opted to enlist full time. He was part of the wrestling league, where his formidable frame and match strategy earned him accolades. 

Alexsandr Senaviev has a boisterous sense of humor with a booming laugh. He can be quite blunt, but without the intent to offend

Senaviev's younger sister is a doctor and our discussion had barely started when he was showing me pictures of her in her doctor's smock, along with a dozen more photos of his nieces and nephews and his own kids. […] He and his sister grew up in a strict household without many things, which is why he makes a great effort to enjoy life. They both make sure that their kids are loved and raised with laughter. At the same time, he doesn't like to buy or accumulate physical objects and emphasizes this with his children, much to their consternation. I suspect that's also partly to do with his divorce. […]

(Also the main reason why we refer to Tachanka as 'lord'/godly is mainly 'cause his weapons/loadout is shit.)

Ladies and gentlemen, we got ourselves a REAL LIFE DILF <33

From what I gathered on his wiki he has at least two children, one of them a son and an ex-wife! Also him being an ex wrestler because of his size and strength...

Imagine being a babysitter for his kids, a 6 year old boy and a sweet 3 year old girl who absolutely adore their nanny who spends the majority of their time with them since their father is still a busy man and their mother is using her newfound freedom as a divorced woman so you're babysitting the little ones for a hefty sum from their dad whenever you're free from college.

But you have to admit, while the kids are literal angels and a delight to babysit, they nor the money are the sole reason for you being so eager to babysit and their father, Alexsandr, played a huge part in it too.

He was so large and heavily build, no doubt from his years in the military but his charming, boisterous attitude combined with his broad, toothy grin that almost seemed boyish on his mature face was what really made you fall for him :(( Whenever the kids were playing or napping, you two had a little time with each other to just talk and spend time together, get to know each other better because 'Let's not make this one of those stick-in-the-ass rigid employer-employee relationships, yes?' as Alexsandr put it himself.

The connection between you deepened but you were still so shy under his clear blue eyes :(( You couldn't possibly do the first move, what if he doesn't return your feelings? He's much older than you, he has a military career, two kids and a divorce, surely he wouldn't ever be interested in someone like you...right?

Ofc little did you know that Alexsandr was tugging his lengthy, heavy cock every night after sending you off with a thick wad of cash and a loud, happy thank you for taking care of his kids, though in reality he was everything but happy :(( Like it or not but the burly male fell for you, the most cliche thing on earth, the young, sweet babysitter that visited him home almost every day to care for his little ones with a gentle smile towards them and him too, such a stark contrast from his ex wife...

He was cumming every night multiple times to the thought of you right here beside him, in his bed, all nice and naked, sated and warm after a night of passionate love making. He came on his hairy tummy with a displeased growl, once the post nut clarity set in and realized that he wasted so much precious seed when it could be inside you >:(

Alexsandr knew he had to have you, had to confess to you how he felt but didn't know how; his loud, charismatic attitude failing him for the first time in years but these thoughts were for the time being pushed back once again to the back of his mind. He could think of a better solution on how to win you over once he wasn't so terribly horny, testosterone clouding his mind as his heavy cock jumped to life once again, thick potent sperm oozing from his swollen tip and Alexsandr could only think about how well he could breed you, he was a real stud despite his age y'know? Plus he always wanted another kid anyway <33

[txttletale]

so when Palestine fights back by killing civilians, including children, you go: it's justified

but when Russia invades Ukraine and kills civilians, including children, and Ukraine fights back in defense, you go, Ukraine should settle for peace

and you say Israel can just stop the occupation, they have that power and then they could avoid their civilians dying by simply deciding to that, yet you don't see that the Ukraine war stop just as "easily", by Russia stopping the invasion. They invaded, they started the war, just like Israel occupied Palestine, they are the one who can stop it

I know these are two different situations but I cant help but notice how different your approaches are, like adjusting your theory according to who is attacking who.

also, you said it would be strategically impossible (im paraphrasing you) for Russia to stop their invasion, well, wouldn't it also be strategically impossible for Israel to stop their occupation.

Also, if Ukraine settle for peace (I want them to, I generally agree with your points on the topic) and Russia gains something from it (as their peace treaty will most definitely assign a lot of Ukraine land to Russia), then Russia gets the message that invading other countries is successful and a good way to go about things. I mean, obviously the peace work will begin after they settle for peace, preferably working with Russia, im just curious to hear your thoughts.

English isnt my first language but I hope you understand

volodymyr zelensky might have something to say about this comparison. obviously to be clear his comparison is fucking ridiculous, but is illustrative of a key difference--that all of the force of NATO are arrayed behind ukraine (a privilege not enjoyed by palestine) and that the government of ukraine is aligned with NATO rather than its own people--which is why it's selling everything that's not nailed down to the predatory west.

i do of course think that russia should stop the invasion! i respond flippantly to most people asking this because they rarely ask in good faith, but let me say it unequivocally--i'm a communist, i think that the fall of the soviet union was a tragedy and the oligarchic mafia state that rose from its ashes is an insult to everything it stood for. putin is a far-right anticommunist and the oligarchs that he represents are scum. in the case of russia vs. ukraine, russia is straightforwardly the agressor and it would be a good thing if russia withdrew immediately.

but when i talk about the need for a peace settlement, i'm not (no matter how much nationalists and the NATO fandom will yell that i am) advocating for an unconditional ukrainian surrender. i'm talking about the maximalist positions about 'punishing russia' and ensuring some imaginary total defeat that the NATO bloc advocate for and push the ukrainian position towards. the US and their allies have made no secret of they fact that they seek to prolong the war, use it as an opportunity to open ukraine up to US investors, and don't care about ukrainian casualties:

[1] [2] [3] [4]

& ultimately, there is the fact that i (and almost all my followers) live in the imperial core--as communists there is nothing any of us can do to push russia towards peace. that's a task for the russian communist and peace movements. what we can do, however, is obstruct and protest NATO's involvement in the war. this is what the union of ukrainian communists have said in their statement on the war:

We appeal to the Russian workers as a fraternal class, bearing all the burdens of war on its shoulders, also suffering from impoverishment, unemployment, and the elimination of fundamental rights and freedoms: seek the defeat of the bourgeois power in Russia, turn your weapons against the Russian oligarchs and their political acolytes. We are ready to fight with you to turn the imperialist war into a class war against the power of capital and for the communist revolution. We appeal to the workers of the countries belonging to NATO: To stop the threat of the destruction of humankind in the nuclear clash of imperialist war is only possible in a struggle not for abstract peace, but for the overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie of their countries, who are waging these wars and profiting from them. Work for the defeat of the bourgeois governments and the NATO bloc in this war, put forward the task of turning the war between nations into a war between classes, turn the weapons produced by workers' hands not against the workers of other countries, but against the capitalists of your own countries, against their power.

—Union of Communists of Ukraine, On The War And The Tasks Of The Working Class

so--people in the west are powerless to do anything to prevent or weaken russian imperialism, short of supporting their own imperialist powers--which, if you care at all about human life or the working class, is robbing peter to pay paul. however, those same bourgeois western governments are the ones supporting the israeli genocide--this is a case in which the Western proletariat can and should mobilize to suppress the imperialism and colonialism of the aggressor, because they live in countries that directly support it.

of course, there are also massive differences in the actual circumstances of the relations between russia and ukraine--russia is not, for example, built on stolen ukrainian land, nor is ukraine an open-air concentration camp whose water and electricity are provided by russia only sparingly, nor has ukraine seen in peacetime regular brutal massacre, invasion, bombing, and murder as palestine does every single year of so-called 'peace' that passes between israel and palestine. the situation of 'peace' between russia and ukraine before 2022 was not one of totally intolerable one-sided massacre, as the situation of 'peace' between israel and palestine has been.

as such, there are in fact multiple parties who can pursue peace in ukraine, including parties that we, communists in the West--who are the people i blog as and for--can pressure and organize against effectively. there is only one party that can pursue peace in israel. the situation is not comparable, either on its face or in the relation the West and as a result communists in the West have to it.

[zvaigzdelasas]

The 120,000 ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh will leave for Armenia as they do not want to live as part of Azerbaijan and fear ethnic cleansing, the leadership of the breakaway region told Reuters on Sunday. Armenia's Prime Minister also said the Karabakh Armenians were likely to leave the region, and that Armenia was ready to take them in[...]

Azerbaijan says it will guarantee their rights and integrate the region, but the Armenians say they fear repression.

24 Sep 23

[theoppositeofprofound]

Everyone’s trying to make Goncharov a realistic, nuanced depiction of Russian culture, trying to put Scorsese and co. on a pedestal. Part of the point of Goncharov is what they missed! It’s a film made at the height of the Cold War, with a fundamentally silly premise (the evil commies are releasing hardened criminals to infiltrate the European underworld and… undermine good old Mom’n’Pop mafias?) and yet the delivery, the pathos the actors bring, the attention to detail of the production team, take a ridiculous idea and make it human. In a classic Scorsese move, Goncharov, the ostensible villain, is made the focal character, we watch the entire movie through his eyes. We sympathize with his fears of returning to prison, his marital troubles, his love of classic watches. The way the film predicts the aesthetic fixations of the Russian Mafia after the fall of the Soviet Union is also remarkable—the scene with the Neapolitan shoemaker, the famous boat scene. It’s not, as some people like to pretend, a film immune to the foibles of its time. But it is remarkably empathetic and prescient despite them.

[dostoyevsky-official]

Charismatic and intelligent. But too keenly aware of himself as both these things. Angry, frustrated – for good reason. Perhaps reckless, lacking strategic thinking. Narrow-minded and naïve. Who could better represent an entire group? The bright and irrepressible liberal middle-class. Yes, more than all the other things, Navalny was a talisman – he had magical powers over his people, but was hardly stimulating to others. To some he represented hope for a different Russia. He represented incarnate individual responsibility, competition (‘fair’ elections are ‘competitive’ ones), self-actualization. A personal antidote to apathy. He was in earnest, fired up – something to aspire to. An anachronism ( ‘out of time’) in a system designed to disempower and demotivate, close ranks and watch your back… in the end he transcended his actual views to become a symbol of Russia’s inability to find a way out of personalist politics. Martyrdom was a choice. People won’t say it – but he would have been better off saving himself. His was a stance both more principled than many others, but which also reveals the personalized nature of his appeal and his politics – he was ‘anti-Putin’ and positioned himself that way on purpose. And clearly Putin felt personally challenged on some level – hence his refusal to even name him. But the anti-Putin contains many ingredients of Putin himself – as numerous people point out (privately, of course) even now. The style over substance. The cultivated charisma which stems from a rather overweening masculine pitch to authority (very, very few feminists are given any airtime to express their deep-seated discomfort with his language). The temporary and fickle try-out of different ideas and slogans. The super-narrow political imagination – one might even say ‘anti-political’ imagination (anti-corruption is not politics).

[...] Navalny was pointedly hostile to people who have every right to live and work anywhere they like in Russia – Russian citizens in fact, who happen to be Muslim and racialized as such. It’s mistaken to see him as ‘cannily’ channelling nationalist sentiment in an acceptable way to urban Russians. Instead, we should read this as an essential script of liberal failure; in a country with millions of Muslims and rich diversity – and where inequality and ethnicity go hand-in-hand – playing the race card shows political immaturity at best and was ominous. [...] He represented everything that is naïve about liberals in Russia – ‘if only we could just get on with being a normal country like the USA, everything else will fall into place’. In a sense, he traces an ideological line back to the Komsomol boys who privatized opportunity in the late Soviet Union and deluded themselves they were building a market where all would prosper. [...] Churchills, Stalins, Trumps are ultimately just part of the structures of feeling that dictate their eras. Navalny was, despite everything, an anachronism not so different to Putin: out of step with what most Russian people want.

(x)

[sovietpostcards]

Were their things/foods you were excited to try after the fall of the Union that you were not allowed to or were not accessible during Soviet times? Also, did you ever visit Moscow during Soviet era and visit GUM?

I was still a kid when that happened, I didn't really understand what was happening politically, so everything new was exciting. The thing I remember the most is the chocolate bars (Snickers, Mars). We had chocolate before and even chocolate bars, but they were really different and nowhere quite as good. Other things I remember from the early 90s are full nut hazelnut chocolate bars, gum (Stimorol, Wrigley's), and instant drinks (Yupi, Invite). In general, the amount of snacks and sweets pouring in from outside of the country was overwhelming. I remember saving my pocket money to get something at the end of the week.

Oh oh and Kinder Surprise of course!! I was obsessed with them! The very first line of toys I collected were the crocodiles (1991), then there were hippos, lions, sharks, penguins... I had a of them! I wonder where they are now.

As for visiting Moscow, the only time I visited during the USSR was in 1989 when I was a wee kid. I have a big color photo of my dad and me standing in the Red Square. Here's what I remember from the trip:

the out-of-this-world miracle stairs (metro escalator, «лесенка-чудесенка»)

looking out the windows of a metro car and seeing all black and how fast it was going

also, being in the top bunk in the train - it was very exciting

That's all. :)

[coochiequeens]

Men being the worst to women in war zones

Even as missiles pound Ukrainian cities and soldiers guard trenches, the war in Ukraine has maintained a stubbornly online element, as supporters from all around the world clash with Russian trolls and fascists. As someone who has refused to leave Kyiv amid the air raid alarms and kamikaze drone attacks and is chronically online, I find being Ukrainian in the age of social media simultaneously infuriating, uplifting, and just emotionally exhausting.

One of the oddest aspects of this is the focus on Ukrainian women’s looks. There has been a vigorous debate among Ukrainian supporters about why people tend to fixate on Ukrainian women’s physical appearances. That includes claims like “Ukrainian women are hot and good at cooking.” Personally, I haven’t found these remarks terribly offensive—although, perhaps, I’ve just got bigger issues to worry about at the moment. But the stereotypes concerning Ukrainian women (and Eastern European women in general) are troubling and potentially harmful—and they point to issues of gender and national identity that a postwar country will have to reckon with.

As in the case of any grassroots movement, the informal community of Ukraine supporters is prone to disagreements and internal debate. Discussions tend to be civil, even when the topics themselves are hugely complicated, such as whether Ukraine should have exchanged a Wagner Group mercenary for Ukrainian prisoners of war. Most of these discussions are purely theoretical: Ethical issues are discussed, military strategies are dissected in minuscule detail, and short clips of Russian President Vladimir Putin posing for the cameras are studied for clues on the state of the Russian president’s allegedly deteriorating health. But arguments over the descriptions of Ukrainian women are a little more personal.

Statements online range from well-intended but questionable generalizations to outright objectifying compliments comparing “naturally attractive” or “well-groomed” Ukrainian women to their “Western counterparts” (usually with the implication that Western women have somehow been ruined by feminism). The weirdest interaction I’ve experienced was a foreigner angrily reacting to my celebration of McDonald’s return to the Ukrainian market. He was adamant that Ukrainian women are good-looking because we live off a steady diet of fresh produce and simple, healthy, and home-cooked meals, and he even tried scolding me for enjoying the cheeseburger (and the brief illusion of normalcy) I had been dreaming of for months.

Users posting opinions such as these are also fond of sharing and reposting images of what a stereotypical Ukrainian woman apparently looks like—and although the traditional beauty standard for Ukrainian women has historically called for deep brown eyes, dark eyebrows, and tan skin, these images tend to portray buxom blonde and blue-eyed girls wearing heavy makeup. The men posting these compliments claim that they are simply appreciating Ukrainian women while supporting Ukraine’s struggle, but critics (many of whom are, coincidentally, Ukrainian women) call it creepy and perhaps even fetishistic. Complicating all this is that the most vocal foreign supporters of Ukraine online are mostly men.

Fetishizing women from other countries is common, of course, but behind all this is that the burden of lookism for Ukrainian women is one of the heaviest in the world—a reality rooted in the country’s post-Soviet history. Although vocal so-called appreciators of Ukrainian women claim they find Ukrainian women attractive because of their natural good looks, what they actually appreciate is the amount of effort Ukrainian women have learned to put into their appearances.

The fall of the Soviet Union brought along turbulent changes in both society and ideology—including gender expression. Although the Soviet idea of femininity demanded that women be flawless, resilient, and (in some ways) androgynous and asexual builders of the socialist utopia while remaining supportive wives and loving mothers, the 1990s brought along two new models of female gender expression. Hugely influential Ukrainian anthropologist and feminist historian Oksana Kis describes these two polar identities as the Berehynia (the hearth goddess, a pseudo-traditional model of femininity rooted in nostalgic nationalism and conservative ideas) and the Barbie.

As the name indicates, the Barbie identity adopted by women in young post-Soviet countries grew from a sudden influx of Western media and consumerism. It was also an identity borne out of sudden social change and an uncertain future. Millions of women, who had been an integral part of the Soviet workforce and who had at least been able to rely on state-provided child care and social support, ended up jobless in a largely lawless society where ruthless men were abruptly climbing to the top.

Although the Soviet ideology had convinced women that they had to carry the dual duty of being both comrades and mothers, the 1990s taught them that the surest way to build the life of their dreams (heavily influenced by suddenly available Western television and magazines) was to attach themselves to tough, aggressively masculine men on the rise to riches.

Looks became a widely accepted social currency—and, for a while, one of the only types of influence and power available to ambitious young women in Ukraine. Beauty salons rapidly opened up on every street while magazines—including the local versions of Elle and Cosmopolitan, which reached the Ukrainian market in the early 2000s—aggressively preached the importance of following the latest fads and keeping yourself thin and youthful-looking, pleasing your husband, and chasing away any real or imaginary rival. As women from Russia’s ex-colonies (and Russia itself) started traveling abroad more often and Western tourists discovered a new market, Slavic women became associated with sex work and a willingness to marry relatively well-off foreigners without asking too many questions.

Thankfully, the recent popularity of feminism (along with a general movement toward stability, democracy, and gender equality) has convinced Ukrainian women that they don’t have to limit themselves by choosing to be a traditional housewife or a glamorous gold digger constantly on the prowl for a husband.

Instead of telling their readers how to dress to find the man of their dreams, Ukrainian magazines have begun addressing matters such as politics, domestic abuse, sexual identity, personal finances, and wellness—although today, they are also forced to write about staying safe in the midst of a war or dealing with power outages. In turn, the women themselves are building impressive careers without having to bat their eyelashes at a perpetually horny boss. In fact, about 15 percent of the Ukrainian army is made up of women, as is more than 20 percent of Ukraine’s parliament.

Yet even this doesn’t deter people from objectifying Ukrainian women—just take a look at the comments under photos of Ukrainian servicewomen published online. The stereotypes are persistent—whether it’s in the relatively harmless form of Western supporters going googly-eyed or the far more disturbing language out of Russia. Online comments from “pro-Z” Russians on social media are packed with fetishistic sadism (for example, rape fantasies, queries about where to find a forcibly deported “Ukrainian refugee wife,” and just general leering comments) aimed at Ukrainian women and girls.

For Ukrainian women, this is hardly new: As with any colonial power, Russia has a long history of treating Ukrainian women as attractive but uncouth and naive provincials to be reeducated at best or exotic objects to be leered at in the worst-case scenarios. While 19th and 20th-century Russian poets treated Ukraine (or, as it was known to them back in the day, “Little Russia”) as an inspiring exotic locale populated by primitive but kind-hearted locals prone to superstition, not much changed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In the early 2000s, a Russian remake of The Nanny aired and instantly became a massive hit. The main difference between the American original and the Russian remake? In the remake, Fran (who was stereotypically American-Jewish and street smart in the original) became Vicka, a Mariupol-born Ukrainian migrant worker who found employment with a sophisticated Moscow family. Throughout the series’ seven-season run, Vicka was the butt of the joke because of her heavy accent, lack of education, gold-digging tendencies, and vulgar behavior. (This included stealing small items, which one of the characters on the show openly compared to “Ukrainians stealing Russian gas.”) But she was ultimately portrayed as attractive enough to marry the rich, intelligent male protagonist. Even in 2022, this colonialist mindset hasn’t changed much—just last summer, Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan fantasized about “Russians visiting Kyiv after the war and enjoying the local cuisine and fresh produce from Ukrainian farms just like in the good old days,” adding that “Russian husbands would be once again breaking their necks to stare at the dark-browed Oksanas (a general term Russians occasionally use to signify Ukrainian women).”

But even pro-Ukrainian admiration for Ukrainian women’s looks comes with a potential price. Seeing Ukrainians as so-called perfect victims who are owed sympathy purely because they’re good-looking, predominantly white, and symbolize a certain type of femininity isn’t helpful. What happens if someone decides that Ukrainian women, as a whole, are not as pretty or docile as they thought they were? Would that be a reason to support Ukraine any less? And in the context of a war where the invader is using brutal sexual violence, fetishizing women seems particularly uncomfortable.

Of course, everyone is free to voice their opinions—and I’m definitely not saying you shouldn’t compliment a Ukrainian woman you find attractive or that you’re some kind of monster for saying Ukrainians are a good-looking bunch. But in a country where good looks have been, in part, a survival tactic, maybe find something else to praise.

Oleksandra Povoroznyk is a Kyiv-based journalist and translator.

[planetofsnarfs]

Following are remarks Friday of the foreign minister of Poland, Radek Sikorski, at the United Nations Security Council.

* * *

I’m amazed at the tone and the content of the presentation by the Russian ambassador.

And I thought I could be useful by correcting the record. Ambassador Nebenzya has called Kyiv a client of the West. Actually, Kyiv is fighting to be independent of anybody.

He calls them a criminal Kyiv regime. In fact, Ukraine has a democratically elected government.

He calls them Nazis. Well, the president is Jewish, the defense minister is Muslim, and they have no political prisoners.

He said that Ukraine was wallowing in corruption. Well, Alexei Navalny documented how honest and full of probity his own country is.

He blamed the war on U.S. neo-colonialism. In fact, Russia was trying to exterminate Ukraine in the 19th century, again under Bolsheviks, and now it is the third attempt.

He said we are prisoners of Russophobia. “Phobia” means irrational fear. Yet, we are being threatened almost every day by the former president of Russia and Putin’s propagandists with nuclear annihilation. I put it to you that it is not irrational — when Russia threatens us, we trust them.

He said that we are denying Russia’s security interests. Not true. We only started rearming ourselves when Russia started invading her neighbors.

He even said that Poland attacked Russia during World War II. What is he talking about? It was the Soviet Union that attacked Poland together with Nazi Germany on the 17th of September 1939. They even held a joint victory parade on the 27th of September.

He says that Russia has always only beaten back aggression. Well, what were then Russian troops doing at the gates of Warsaw in August 1920? They were on a topographic excursion? The truth is that for every time Russia was invaded, she has invaded ten times.

He says that it is a perfidious proxy war by the West. My advice is – don’t fall into the Western trap. Withdraw your troops to international borders and avoid this Western plot.

He also says that there was an illegal coup in Kyiv in 2014. I was there. There was no coup. President Yanukovych murdered a hundred of his compatriots and was removed from office by a democratically elected Ukrainian parliament, including by his own party, the Party of Regions.

And finally he is saying that we the West are somehow trying to persuade that Russia can never be beaten. Well, Russia did not win the Crimean War, it didn’t win the Russo-Japanese war, it didn’t win World War I, it didn’t win the battle of Warsaw, it didn’t win in Afghanistan, and it didn’t win the Cold War.

But there’s good news. After each failure there were reforms.

Such demagoguery is unworthy of a member on a permanent basis of the Security Council. But what the ambassador has achieved is to remind us why we resisted Soviet domination and what Ukraine is resisting now.

They failed to subjugate us then. They’ll fail to subjugate Ukraine and us now.

[visenyaism]

you know i haven’t seen anyone mention how goncharov is apparently a movie contemporary to 1973 but also set after the fall of the soviet union which would make martin scorsese two full decades ahead of his time geopolitically